Bright Summaries - The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

Lieutenant Giovanni Drogo is posted to Fort Bastiani, which guards the border with the Tartar steppe, although no one knows whether or not the Tartars have ever actually set foot there. He has high hopes for the new life he is beginning, which he expects to be filled with glory. Nevertheless, he feels a vague foreboding as if he were about to set out on a journey of no return (p. 3).

As he struggles to find the fort on its isolated, rocky outcrop, he encounters Captain Ortiz, who has been there for 18 years. The building itself is bleak and forbidding, and terrifies and hypnotises Drogo in equal measure. He reports to Matti, the forts commander, but is so intimidated by his surroundings that he requests an immediate transfer. However, he must wait four months before he can obtain the medical certificate which will permit him to leave. And yet, as soon as Drogo obtains it, he keeps putting his decision off until the next day, and eventually ends up spending his entire life at the fort waiting for an attack. When this attack finally takes place, he is evacuated due to illness.

On his first evening, Drogo sneaks onto the ramparts, an area which is off limits, because he wants to look out at the desert, where certain soldiers claim that a smoking volcano and white towers can occasionally be seen emerging from the fog to the north. The young man feels a kind of connection to the landscape, even though he finds it profoundly depressing.

Two days later, he takes his first shift on the watch alongside the fastidious Sergeant-Major Tronk, who has spent 22 years at the fort and lives in perpetual fear of an enemy attack. This strengthens Drogos desire to leave. During the night watch, during which the officers make it a point of honour to stay awake, he falls asleep: that very night time began to slip by him beyond recall (p. 51).

A few days later, Drogo goes to visit Prosdocimo, who has been the regimental tailor for 15 years and who claims that he is going to leave the fort any day now. He advises the lieutenant not to follow the example set by the other officers who have been there for years and whose lives are consumed by the expectation of a hypothetical invasion. However, Drogo is convinced that he will be leaving the fort in four months.

A short time later, he and his fellow officers celebrate Lagorios departure after two years of service. Lagorio tries in vain to persuade his friend Angustina, who is eligible, to leave with him. Angustina refuses because he wants to fight the Tartars at any cost. He will wait in vain, as he will die two years later.

Having arrived at the fort in autumn, Giovanni is surprised to notice that winter has already arrived. In February, he goes to get his all-important medical certificate, but as he gazes at the desert from the window, he eventually decides to stay. He has fallen into a comfortable routine at the fort, and every day he congratulates himself on his decision, which he believes to have been merely postponed.

Two years later, it seemed as if Drogos existence had come to a halt (p. 86). He does not seem to register the passing of time, although he realises that he is no longer a young man. He has a strange dream in which he sees spirits bearing a young Angustina peacefully into death.

During one night watch, the lieutenant notices a black shape on the horizon. He is simultaneously frightened and glad that something is finally happening. It turns out to be a horse which does not belong to the fort. One reckless soldier called Lazzari goes out to look for it, but he is shot down by the sentry when he tries to re-enter the fort because although the sentry recognises him, Lazzari does not know the password, and the sentry adheres strictly to the rules. The mysterious horse disappears and all of the men secretly hope that it is a sign of an event soon to come.

The next day, the soldiers spot what they believe to be an army marching through the desert towards them. Although this news causes a great deal of commotion among all the other soldiers, Colonel Filimore no longer believes in a Tartar invasion because he has been waiting for it for too long. Accordingly, he soon learns that they are merely units from the Northern Kingdom who have been sent on a nonviolent mission to mark off a section of the border, which the fort commander had neglected to do for years.

As such, a unit of men is deployed along the border to beat the troops from the Northern Kingdom to the punch, but after a gruelling march through a snowstorm to scale a mountain, they are subjected to the irony of finding the officers from the Northern Kingdom already in position. The punishing trek has taken its toll on the frail Angustina, who volunteered for the expedition, and he dies of exhaustion that night. His comrades envy him for dying a soldiers death.

Drogo has been at the fort for four years, and observes the inexorable changing of the seasons. Ortiz, who has become his best friend, advises him to leave while he is still young, as it is unlikely that the Tartars will ever arrive. He never took that chance when it was offered to him due to a lack of ambition. Like all the soldiers at the fort do at one time or another, Drogo has a renewed surge of desire to leave, but he believes that, at 25 years of age, he has all the time in the world ahead of him.